


Heinlein's Bed

by apis_mellifera



Category: HEINLEIN Robert A. - Works, Heinlein's Bed
Genre: Not enough no, Other, dear god no, what is this I don't even
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:03:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apis_mellifera/pseuds/apis_mellifera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Heinlein's Bed tells its side of the story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heinlein's Bed

On the surface, I just look like a bed. A plain, ordinary maplewood bed, lovingly made in someone's woodshop. I have drawers and built-in nightstands complete with writing surfaces and tissue dispensers. More on those later.

Bob had intended me to be a waterbed, but his engineering skills weren't quite up to it and dealing with emptying and refilling a bladder full of stale water every so often wasn't something he wasn't really able to do and Ginny really didn't want a waterbed, anyhow. So I'm just a plain platform bed. With some very special features. More on those later, too. They're even more special than the tissue dispensers.

At first, I was just a bed. Really, truly. Usual bed-things happened on me, I'm sure you'd rather not have the details.

After a while, though, I noticed a change. It wasn't just Bob and Ginny in the bed, there was sometimes something else there, too. It was dark and there really isn't another word for it but this: looming. I wasn't really able to see it because I don't have eyes. But there was definitely a presence. And it wasn't friendly.

One night, after their evening exertions, Bob was restless. Ginny was dreaming, probably about pee. She was always talking about her pee dreams. Bob thought she was crazy, whoever heard of a pee dream? As he idly scratched his ballsack, he felt a strange torpor come over him, a darkness settled on him, drawing him into sleep—and other things. I heard—or would have heard, if I had ears—a faint chuckling.

When Bob got up the next morning, I heard Ginny ask him if he were okay. He answered her, sort of vaguely, and went into his office to write. I think he was working on a book or something. Nevermind that. I was more concerned with the presence and it's inky chthonic miasma. Not only was it all over the room, it was slowly infiltrating me as well. There were times I could hear it thinking. 

At first, the thoughts were just whispers at the back of my mind. But then they became clearer and more disturbing. Something about eating Bob's brain? It didn't make sense—how could something non-corporeal eat a brain? Unless it meant its essence? Removing the filters? Because as the years went on, Bob became more and more strange—the books he was writing became more like fantasy wank material—and oh, did the tissue dispensers ever get a workout then!

Eventually, Bob was spending more and more time in me, as he was becoming increasingly frail. That's when the built in writing surfaces really came into their own. I am proud to say that, in conjunction with the tissue dispensers and the writing surfaces, I am in no small part responsible for his last novel. The bed? The bed's just a shell—I'm all brain-eater now.

Buy me at your own peril.


End file.
